Seven Partly Underground Rooms and Buildings for Water, Ice, and Midgets PDF
Preview Seven Partly Underground Rooms and Buildings for Water, Ice, and Midgets
Published by Princeton ArchitecturAl Press 37 East 7th Street New York, New York 10003 (212) 995-9620 for a free catalogue of books, call (800) 722-6657 or visit our web site at www.papress.com ©1997 Mary-Ann Ray All rights reserved Printed and bound in the United States 00 99 98 97 4 3 2 1 First edition No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews. Cover photograph: Triclinium, Properties of Giulia Felix, Pompeii; Mary-Ann Ray Cover design: Nicholas Lowie, Sheridan Lowrey Design: Nicholas Lowie, Sheridan Lowrey Copy editing: Hadley Soutter Arnold and Therese Kelly Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ray, Mary-Ann, 1958– Seven partly underground rooms and buildings for water, ice, and midgets / Mary-Ann Ray 78 p. : ill. ; 22 cm. -- (Pamphlet Architecture ; no. 20) iSbN 1-56898-103-1 (alk. paper) i. Architecture--italy. 2. Underground architecture--italy. i. Title. ii. Series. NA1111.R39 1997 720’ .473’ 0945--dc21 97-4042 CiP SEvEN partlY uNdErgrouNd roomS aNd buildiNgS for watEr, icE, aN d midgEtS pamphlet architecture no 20 Mary-Ann Ray princeton architectural press: new york IV contents triClinium, Praedia di Giulia Felix introductory note: upside-down and inside-out by steven holl 7 pompei foreword 9 ProPerties of GiuliA felix acknowledgments 10 pompeii a note to the reader 12 insular world, Hybrid building, model of the city in the building veneered room, wet room, perpendicular or ‘out of plumb’ plumbing Simultaneously transparent and opaque piers, corner-ful and corner-less, geological (or topographical) and Ephemeral (or gossamer-like) architectures, I reclining Eye-level Horizon Pozzo di San Patrizio orvieto V Well of st. PAtrick 15 l’aPPartamento dei nani orvieto mantova a pair of city architectures, Hovering thresholds, duomo and its obverse, midGet chAmbers and occupied Edges mantua Half monolith/Half ‘manylith,’ up and down Excavation looped Space, and two travelers in the well building inside a building, folded path, going down Ends up Entrailed Substructure, occupiable foundation, deeply wrinkled Surfaces, visiting giants Slipped center, flip-flop Space, rhizomatic rooms II tumulo della CorniCe VI tePidarium, terme Suburbane cerveteri ercolano tomb of the cornice 23 tePid Pool, suburbAn bAths cerveteri herculaneum alter-city, city found by Subtraction (‘built’ in reverse) Space machined from geology, Seamless Surface, Stretched membrane Sub-urban city, buildings as formwork furrowed threshold, unenforced perspective, bellows of Stone, and primal cinema tepid Space, Hollow walls, Hanging floors, built body temperature, Surface tension circulationless Space, Hangers-on, inlaid black plane III Sette Sale VII GhiaCCiaia, Villa ranuzzi-CoSPi roma bagnarola seven hAlls 31 icehouse, villA rAnuzzi-cosPi rome bagnarola civic Surfaces/working volumes, and gravity po flatlands, lidded Space, rank-breakers in Space-making underpinning, an arch turned down, corrugation, and building as gargantuan fired v essel Spherical Space, geometrical Strength, dome in the round, Half-pushed/Half-pulled, parallel and perpendicular to parallel walls, field of Space with Everywhere place, Sculpted brick Network of paths (the rhizomatic labyrinth), inverted underground grove flat (Exterior) plus deep (interior) parts, Site Shear, lift and dip, Dromos/Tholos, Simultaneous contradictory meanings afterword: notes on the technique and method of photography notes to the traveler: location for the buildings and rooms sources for the illustrations in the text IV triClinium, Praedia di Giulia Felix pompei ProPerties of GiuliA felix 39 pompeii insular world, Hybrid building, model of the city in the building veneered room, wet room, perpendicular or ‘out of plumb’ plumbing Simultaneously transparent and opaque piers, corner-ful and corner-less, geological (or topographical) and Ephemeral (or gossamer-like) architectures, reclining Eye-level Horizon V l’aPPartamento dei nani mantova midGet chAmbers 47 mantua building inside a building, folded path, going down Ends up Entrailed Substructure, occupiable foundation, deeply wrinkled Surfaces, visiting giants Slipped center, flip-flop Space, rhizomatic rooms VI tePidarium, terme Suburbane ercolano tePid Pool, suburbAn bAths 55 herculaneum Sub-urban city, buildings as formwork tepid Space, Hollow walls, Hanging floors, built body temperature, Surface tension circulationless Space, Hangers-on, inlaid black plane VII GhiaCCiaia, Villa ranuzzi-CoSPi bagnarola icehouse, villA rAnuzzi-cosPi 63 bagnarola po flatlands, lidded Space, rank-breakers in Space-making Spherical Space, geometrical Strength, dome in the round, Half-pushed/Half-pulled, Sculpted brick flat (Exterior) plus deep (interior) parts, Site Shear, lift and dip, Dromos/Tholos, Simultaneous contradictory meanings afterword: notes on the technique and method of photography 73 notes to the traveler: location for the buildings and rooms 75 sources for the illustrations in the text 77 “Two large serpents wrapped together, standing inside the city, not in the forest, go underground with their two tails then emerge above ground with only one head.” Francesco Ghezzi, Tuscan poet introductory note: uPside-doWn And inside-out in Virgil’s Aeneid, the three-headed dog Cerberus guards the entrance to the underworld. Dark waters of the river Styx form the floor of this black hole in time where thin skeletons of forlorn souls are condemned to wander forever. Passing a waterfall of nightmares are bleak characters like the ferryman Charon who carefully places coins between the lips of his unlucky passengers. in Mary-Ann Ray’s inspiring work, it seems to me no coincidence to join Los Angeles and Rome, to meditate on the upside-down, to think of the inside- out. What could be more distant to the carved-out, massive inventions of Roman architecture than Los Angeles? How opposite the density of building in thick-walled tufa stone? How thought inverts in Roman cyclical time, with its ritual repetition of every afternoon’s surreal silence, bath, the long Roman meal? While Roman time does not equal the pure repetition of Greek cyclic time, it contrasts sharply with the linearity of Los Angeles or North American time. A culture of endless new experiences, latest fashions and new computers, site our buildings on the web, fixed to screens our eyes “walk” through virtual spaces. Suddenly an experience inverts the virtual and phenomenal. We negotiate space with our legs and arms. A twist and turn of the body opens new perspectives. We feel light with our skin, smell the qualities of space, taste the sweetness of time. The marvelous phenomenal powers of architecture draw us into a space-time cyclone. The Well of Sangallo (St. Patrick) in Orvieto is a marvel for any student of architecture. A stone-carved double helix curve, it is the spatial and temporal opposite of the steel-framed and glass-skinned skyscraper. Like the other examples documented in this little collection, the well is an assistant to a mind in motion and for architectural thought, it must be experienced. Mary-Ann Ray’s dedicated research and experiences remind us of inspirations 7 of the inside-out and the upside down. Where thinness meets density, where fragmented planar objects become space carved-out and volumetric. Ongoing linear time is suddenly tripped here by the thought of cyclical, mythical time. We are moved by the hope of opposites meeting in impossible time and phenomenal space. Steven Holl 8 foreWord This view of seven peculiar buildings has transpired over the course of the past nine or ten years, beginning with a year spent at the American Academy in Rome (1987-1988). This close reading of seven italian spaces, all of which, to varying degrees, nudge or burrow themselves into or away from their grounds, was an opportunity to intimately play out (almost live) desires of architecture, space, and construction that are often difficult to achieve within other versions of “practicing.” in moving through the world, Robert Mangurian and i find ourselves often in the position of the traveler. We are not only travelers to other places, but we also find ourselves travelers within buildings. in the text, the traveler is referred to, and often the accounts of the travelers recount our maiden or return voyages to these spaces. Our readings of the spaces are attempts to re- see, and to re-build, these places into our future of making architecture. The reasons for choosing these particular seven rooms and buildings are multiple. For one thing, all of them strongly take on some aspect of role- playing within the context of their respective grounds. They were also spaces which seemed to have the ability to “flip-flop” in and out of multiple spatial or constructional readings. These are played out and described in the text, and photographs and drawings of the seven chapters. One “flip-flop” that all the rooms and buildings seem to share is probably due to the fact that the origin of their construction was based upon the most objective pragmatic program. For example, in the well with the path to allow beasts of burden to pass and miss each other, in the parallel walls of the cistern with diagonally cut openings to allow water to settle, and in the icehouse made spherical to allow as little surface area for heat loss as possible, a kind of “flip-flop” occurs between the architecture of this inevitability in response to a hard and fast program, and space which has embedded in it extreme abstraction, deep perceptual shifts, and multiple and strange positions for the travelers who now occupy it. This shuttle between multiple, almost contradictory, worlds has kept these buildings alive for us in ways that buildings made within the more straightforward realm of architecture have not. Mary-Ann Ray Los Angeles and Rome 9 AcknoWledGments to my fellow traveler, robert, i dedicate this book. At Princeton Architectural Press i thank Clare Jacobson, Therese Kelly, and Kevin Lippert for all of their work on this book. it has been impressive watching the Press grow out of the basement of the architecture school at Princeton, begun by a student ahead of me in the program there in the early eighties to whom i always looked up with wonderment. That student, Kevin has taken the press from that first basement edition of the black Letarouilly volume into one of the most interesting and productive places for the literature of architecture. Thank you to Steven Holl for making this a part of the Pamphlet Architecture series, and for his ongoing criticism and commentary on its development over the years. The Pamphlet ‘manifesto’ he has established through this series of books, which now number twenty, was a primary force behind this work. Nicholas Lowie and Sheridan Lowrey have designed this book with their inventive and always surprising eyes and takes on things. They have responded smartly to an initial vague request that the book be ‘sturdy’ and feel a little bit like a nineteenth-century traveler’s journal or account. They have been able to do that but give the design another edge at the same time. Hadley Soutter Arnold has insightfully and carefully edited this text in between the other more important projects and work in architecture—i thank her for making the time to take this on, as her involvement has meant a lot. Thank you to Leslie Rowe and Janice Shimizu for help with some of the day-in and day-out work —which they made very enjoyable—and to Monique birault and Lydia Vilppu for their work on the photographs as described in the Afterword. Thank you George Newburn for walking the well up and down that one day. Without the tremendous support of two fellowships, this project could not have received the luxury of time and attention it required. The Howard Crosby butler Traveling Fellowship awarded through Princeton University was really the beginning of this project, allowing work during the summer of 1986 in italy, especially around the villas at bagnarola. i especially acknowledge Lili Auchincloss and the American Academy in Rome for the year 1987-1988 spent in a great volume of a studio, with the resources for traveling and working and being around a set of fascinating people doing other work. All of us at 10 the Academy that year felt extremely fortunate to have had Jim and Mary Ann Melchert at the helm—their direction set a tone for enjoyable and productive work. The methods of photography used to “draw” the seven spaces owe a debt to the work of Sherie Scheer, Jan Dibbetts, and David Hockney. The technique of what we have been calling the “composite” or “built frame” photograph is one that Robert Mangurian and i have used both in our work and in our teaching for reasons that are described in the aft portion of this book under the section titled “Afterword: Notes on the Technique and Method of Photography.” Mostly, i acknowledge and thank deeply my family—barbara Ann, Edna Josephine, Hilary Jane, Minnie Mae, and Norman Gene for supporting me through all my years, and, several key teachers—Robert Jones, Michael Spafford, Michael Graves, and Robert Mangurian (my fellow traveler)—who as “inspirators” have had a profound effect on this and other work. Their thoughtful and perceptive teaching, and their prods and prompts have led not only to this specific project, but to a more overall and ongoing life of seeing, moving in, reacting to, and making space. Mary-Ann Ray 11
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